Manage your subscription

Butcherbird uses vicious whiplash technique to kill its prey

Mice and lizards beware

DanielWClark/US Navy

By Andy Coghlan

Shrikes, dubbed “butcher birds” because they impale their dead prey on thorns, can kill animals larger than themselves – and now we know how. High-speed camera footage of captive shrikes in action shows that they use their beaks to powerfully grip prey animals by the nape of the neck before flinging them around so fast that they instantly suffer fatal whiplash injuries.

“The speed that the shrikes turn their heads when they’re doing this is around the speed of the slow cycle of your washing machine, which is still pretty fast,” says …